The Holy Trinity Athanasian Creed June 15, 2025
Sometime around Trinity Sunday in 1540, Luther was recorded saying the following:
“The Holy Scriptures require a humble reader who knows reverence and fear toward God and constantly says, ‘Teach me, teach me, teach me!’ The Spirit resists the proud. Though they study diligently and some preach Christ purely for a time, nevertheless God excludes them from the church if they’re proud. And every person is a heretic, if not actually, then potentially.”
Luther’s words are as true today as ever, what with all the division and disagreement over just about every doctrine of the faith, not the least of which is the Trinity, there is certainly bound to be heretics among the shepherds, and followers of heretics among the sheep.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere and committed to it.” Ever heard a statement like that? How about, “All religions are fine, they are just different paths to God,” ever heard that? The last pope famously said something along those lines. Ever heard people say, “Just be a good person and God will accept you”?
See, this is the human attempt to hallmark card God, to turn Him into a cliché. We Aesop’s Fables the Bible, turning it into a bunch of little helpful sayings to use at just the right time, as if Scripture is a Chinese Kau Chim container and whenever we need a helpful saying, we shake the container and pull out the stick and see what it says.
And we do this, we do. We even make up a few of our own like, “God helps those who help themselves,” or “I asked Jesus into my heart,” or “Just follow your heart,” or “Everything happens for a reason,” “love the sinner, hate the sin,” which Mahatma Gandhi said in 1929, not Jesus in the first century. These cliches sound Christian…but do they truly and accurately confess the faith?
Here’s the truth, cliches generally do not. See, the Christian faith is a propositional faith. Hallmark cards aside, cliches aside, this faith is propositional. It is a faith of clear, precise, consistent, universal statements or confessions. “I believe this, I believe that, I reject this, I condemn that, I affirm this doctrine, I reject that doctrine.” And we know this is true because, not only do we have such clear and bold confessions in Scripture, but we have it in the three Ecumenical Creeds, and in the Lutheran church we have it in the Lutheran confessions.
And confessing the faith as taught in Scripture and as practiced throughout the history of the church WILL necessarily offend people. Jesus prepares us for this when He says things like, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.” This is our Lord’s warning that confessing the faith aright will make people upset.
In John chapter 6, Jesus spoke, and a lot of people were offended, even people who had been following Him and learning from Him. They didn’t like what He said, they got offended, and they walked away. So, if this is true (which it is) then despite what the world tells us, the cardinal sin, the damnable sin isn’t “offending other people.”
After all, God’s Word IS, by definition, an offense to the world. It upsets people, it brings out the worst in people. Why? Because people, by nature, are enemies and hostile to God, and if to God, then also to His beloved bride, the Church and to each one of us who confess the truth.
When we read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or when we read the End Times parables there is an underlying offensiveness to Jesus’ words, and you can’t get around it. And then He hits us with that Sheep and Goats thing and it’s as offensive as it gets. You don’t go to heaven unless you are a sheep. Sheep get paradise, goats get fire, even though they tried so hard to be good?
What’s my point here? 20th and 21st century Christianity is night and day different than the Christianity of the 1st-5th centuries, really the first 1700 years of Christianity, but let’s focus on the early church. Christianity today is not the Christianity of the early church. And some of that might be okay, but a lot of it is not okay.
For, we’ve lost propositional Christianity. Today, Christianity is more of an expression of some individualist, subjective feeling than it is a proposition. One might stand in church and say, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…but if that other person over there doesn’t believe it, that’s okay…God loves him anyway, and he’s a good person.” Well, when did that become the new creed?
Propositional Christianity is a taboo today because it means that you and I must submit ourselves to the authority of something or someone higher than ourselves. But expressive individualism, which is our culture today, says that our ultimate authority is ourselves, that each individual is his or her own ultimate authority and whatever is authentic to him or her is truth for him or her and no one else has a right to say it’s wrong.
If you, a natural male being, want to define yourself as a woman, then no one has the right to question you because you determine truth for yourself. This is our world today, and it’s in the church and it has overridden propositional, confessional Christianity, the Christianity of history.
In today’s philosophy, folks don’t have to confess Trinitarian theology to be Christian. They don’t have to confess Christ as God to be a follower of Christ. They don’t have to confess the Holy Spirit as God to abide by the Holy Spirit. They can believe whatever they want to about all of it, the Trinity, the natures of Christ, Sacraments, end times, if and how people are saved, Sanctification, church fellowship, church discipline, whatever – people can believe whatever they choose about these things and express their individual selves as they please because – and at the core of it all is – they doubt any of it’s real anyway…it’s just therapy, an illusion that makes them feel a little better.
So, whether you believe in a 6-day creation or not, apparently it no longer matters as long as you believe in something and that something helps you through your day. Don’t want to believe God created only male and female, okay, as long as you are pursuing your truest, authentic self, who’s to say you’re wrong?
And now, here’s what creeds sound like today:
“I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity,”
“I believe in the church of everyday saints as numerous, creative and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder. I believe in the call to each of us that love is love is love, so beloved, let us love. I believe, glorious God. Help my unbelief.”
And millions of Christians in America read or hear this creed and other creeds like it and celebrate with hands in air and smiles on faces because it’s so cute and affirming and loving and they blindly walk a wide path to hell without giving it a second thought.
What we believe matters; what we confess matters, and there is only one way – a narrow way – to heaven. But to appreciate this, we have to put to death the cliches; we have to put to death the 20th and 21st century expressive individualism, set individualist consumerism aside and return to the Christian faith as confessed and lived out by the apostles and the believers of the early church.
I’m not suggesting we join the Restorationist movement of the 19th century; that movement is its own pile of really bad things. But what I’m saying is that we look at the Apostles and how they taught and confessed the faith, and we look at those who came after them, the Apostolic and Post-Apostolic fathers and learn from their example and heed their warnings.
After all it is from that period in time that we get our three ecumenical creeds. And we can also learn a thing or two from Luther and the Reformation, that a consistent, bold, clear, precise statement of faith is always better than a cliché faith, a faith filled with a lot of words but with very little wisdom.
But we must get past the idea that doctrine is the enemy of love or that doctrine is just a bunch of man-made opinions or traditions. Love and doctrine are not opposites; love and doctrine are two sides of the same beautiful and God-given coin. To know God is to know love; to know love is to know God. To rightly confess Christ is to love Christ; to love Christ is to rightly confess Christ. To rightly confess the Sacraments is to love the Sacraments; to love the Sacraments is to rightly confess the Sacraments. To long for the Day of the Lord is to love the day of the Lord; to love the day of the Lord is to rightly confess the Day of the Lord. You see how this works?
To love God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to confess the Holy Trinity as He teaches us in the Scriptures. And no, this isn’t about trying to pass some test where, as long as you average a C or better, you’re in. See, wisdom is more than memorizing a bunch of facts and statements. Yeah, that’s part of it for sure, but faith isn’t about having a brain full of knowledge. Again, not saying that you shouldn’t pursue the knowledge, but WHY do you pursue the knowledge – this is where wisdom comes – this is where faith speaks.
Why pursue sound teaching? Does it make you right with God? No for you already ARE right with God on account of Christ who lovingly died for you. Why learn to speak a bold confession of faith? Does it earn you points in paradise? No for your name is already written in the Book of Life. Why learn to judge between sound doctrine and false doctrine? Does it lead to God giving you special attention? No because you already have God’s full attention as He daily repents you and brings you to life in Him.
Let’s put to death the cliches. The Christian faith is not about good people doing good things in good ways to have a good life. The Christian faith is about the one and only true and only good God making Himself nothing, the servant of all, and dying on the cross so that we who are ANYTHING but good might be saved and set free from the ancient prison called death and hell. It’s about God giving His only Son to die on the cross to pay the price for the sin of the world so that, by faith, you might be saved from the wickedness and evil of this fallen generation.
This is why doctrine matters; this is why our confession of doctrine matters. This is why the creed says, “whoever desires to be saved MUST believe thusly.” It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s not a matter of “close enough,” it’s not a matter of essentials and non-essentials, it’s not a matter of what makes us feel good or what makes us feel bad, it’s not a matter of what most people believe, it’s not a matter of many interpretations or any of the things we invent for ourselves to make us feel better about all the division in the church. No, brothers and sisters in Christ, sound doctrine and how we confess it is a matter of life and death.
It’s not about God loving and saving us should only we get it all right and understand everything perfectly and confess it perfectly. But it’s about knowing God or better, being known BY God.
In a marriage, part of the joy of marriage is learning everything about your spouse, the good, the bad, and everything in between. When you learn more and more of the good things, you celebrate those things with your spouse. When you learn the bad things, you forgive those things. But marriage is all about two people, male and female, coming together as one and learning about each other every step of the way and how to exist together without killing each other.
And this is the symbol of Christ and His church. Christ Jesus died for us even though He knew everything about us, the good, the bad and the really ugly. He lovingly and willingly gave His life anyway so that we might live. And that will never change; He will never undie.
How do we respond to His love and commitment? We respond as the beautiful bride we are by seeking Him and following Him and learning everything we can about Him, by sitting at His feet and listening to Him, by becoming more and more like Him in how we confess the one true Christian faith, and yes, how we live our lives, how we prioritize our days, how we judge what is important and what really is not.
We don’t marry a spouse just so we can say, “Yeah I’m married” and then spend our days and nights with someone else, far from the spouse, as if we are unmarried. We don’t call ourselves Christian but then never go to church unless we absolutely have to, never engage Christ and his Sacraments, never focus on our eternal marriage TO Christ.
Christ has proposed to us by giving His life for us, with our sins and blemishes and all, and making us heirs of the kingdom of God. Our response, driven by the Spirit of Christ who dwells in each of us, is to abide in His Word, to “keep” His Word, and to learn to confess this one true Christian faith consistently, boldly, and without apology to the world. Jesus confesses our names in heaven every moment of every day. By His Spirit, may we learn to confess His name aright at every opportunity whether it offends people or draws sinners to repentance, whether confessing it brings suffering and persecution, or brings sinners to the baptismal font.
God’s Word is living and active – IT alone accomplishes what it sets out to do. It’s not our cleverness of speech or our can-do attitude that saves people, but only God’s living Word. And the Creeds confess our God and His living Word with precision. As Lutherans we also have the Lutheran Confessions, a true and correct exposition of the same Scripture from which the Creeds originate.
So, I encourage you and challenge you to read the Book of Concord. Start with The Augsburg Confession, move on to the Defense of Augsburg and Smalcald and even the Formula of Concord. And read the creeds. Memorize the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and regularly read the Athanasian Creed.
God FOR you, Trinity for you, Christ for you, Spirit for you. He works tirelessly for your benefit from creation until the last day, God works so that you never have to face the horrible and eternal state of death and separation from Him. And just as He delights in His only Son, true wisdom incarnate, so too does He delight in you..this is wisdom. Amen.
